Valley Christian defense rises up and leads team to win over Valley, 24-12

What a difference a week makes. Last week Valley Christian opened their football season against Delta and allowed the Saints to score 58 points. This week, the Lions played much better in a 24-12 win over Valley. Saturday night against the Vikings, the Lions proved to be a bit more stingy, allowing only 12 points, six coming on a solid drive in the first quarter and six on a long run in the third quarter. "Our defense played better tonight because our defensive coordinator was incredibly disappointed with how many points we allowed last week," linebacker Connor Tinker said. "This week it was a priority not to give up as many points." Added Noah Lutes, "We had a lot of defensive struggles last week, so we spent a lot of time and effort this week in practice improving that and being the defense that we know we can be. That's our goal for the rest of the season; to keep improving and getting better on defense." While the defense was stout, the offense wasn't exactly on fire, but still scored three touchdowns and two, two-point conversions to score 24 points. Lutes opened the scoring on the game's second play from scrimmage when he ran around the left end for a 48-yard touchdown run. Daniel Fourie had the conversion that put the Lions up 8-0. In the second quarter, Lutes threw a 60-yard touchdown pass to Riley Garcia, followed by a conversion by Tinker, to give the Lions a 16-6 lead. The Vikings cut the lead to 16-12 midway through the third quarter, but before the quarter was up, the Lions scored one last time on a 42-yard touchdown pass from Lutes to Tinker. The pass was behind the line of scrimmage, but Tinker made a few defenders miss and sprinted the rest of the way to the end zone. "We found out less than two hours before the game that our starting quarterback couldn't go," said Lutes, the team's second-string quarterback. "I normally play right guard, so we did a good job overcoming adversity and playing as a team and managing to have a decent passing offense without our starting quarterback." Added Tinker, "I felt we played great. We had fewer mistakes and penalties tonight than we had last week. I felt like we came in confident and ready to win." Head coach Doug Williams was pleased with the win. "Offensively, in a perfect world Luke would be on the line and Connor would be the starting quarterback," Williams said. "That didn't happen tonight, but we persevered and got through that adversity and that was a good experience for everyone involved."